He was among America’s most wanted — the King of Clubs in the card deck used
by US troops to identify key Iraqi leaders. As he fled the pursuit of
American forces invading Iraq a decade ago it seemed everything was against
him.

Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri was then 60 years old and suffering from leukaemia. A
$10 million American bounty was on his head. And as a key henchman of Saddam
Hussein, number six on the US list of prominent regime figures and deeply
implicated in crimes against the Iraqi people, he was already hated by much
of Iraq.